The Alliance for OpenUSD (hereinafter: AOUSD) has been announced by Autodesk, Pixar, Adobe, Apple, and NVIDIA. These companies will work together with the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), an affiliate of the Linux Foundation, to standardize and develop Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) technology.
Developed by Pixar Animation Studios, OpenUSD (Open Universal Scene Description) is a technology for high-performance 3D scene creation, offering robust interoperability across tools, data and workflows. The power and flexibility of OpenUSD make it an ideal content platform to accommodate the needs of new industries and applications.
AOUSD aims to standardize the 3D ecosystem by promoting the functionality of the Open Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). By increasing the interoperability of 3D tools and data, the Alliance will enable developers and content creators to create, compose and simulate large-scale 3D projects to build an ever-wider range of 3D-enabled products and services.
It also intends to create specifications that describe OpenUSD’s capabilities in detail, increasing compatibility, enabling broader adoption, integration, and implementation, and enabling incorporation into specifications by other standards bodies.
The Linux Foundation’s JDF was chosen as the home of the project because it enables open, efficient, and effective development of the OpenUSD specification, while providing a pathway to approval by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
AOUSD provides a leading forum for jointly defining technology extensions across the industry and invites a wide range of companies and organizations to participate in shaping the future of OpenUSD.
Comments from each company on AOUSD
Pixar CTO and AOUSD Chairman Steve May
May: Universal Scene Description was invented at Pixar and is the technical foundation of our state-of-the-art animation pipeline. OpenUSD is based on Pixar’s years of research and application in filmmaking. We open sourced the project in 2016, but OpenUSD’s influence now extends beyond film, visual effects, and animation to other industries that increasingly rely on 3D data for media exchange.
With the launch of AOUSD, we mark the next groundbreaking step, the continued evolution of OpenUSD as a technology and its positioning as an international standard.
Gordon Bradley, Fellow, Media & Entertainment, Autodesk
Bradley: Whether building CG worlds, digital twins, or looking to the 3D web, content creators need integrated tools to collaborate and share data across tools, services, and platforms.
By supporting the Alliance for OpenUSD, Autodesk promotes 3D interoperability in visual effects, animation, and beyond, helping customers design and create a better world. We are pleased to be able to realize the vision of Pixar for the future.
Guido Quaroni, Senior Director, 3D&I, Engineering, Adobe
Quaroni: At Adobe, it’s important to provide artists with flexible and powerful solutions that work across devices. Leveraging a common 3D data representation in the creative process increases the value each package or device brings. OpenUSD was created to be one such “synergy”. We are excited to have a diverse group of companies join us to support this innovative and open technology.
Mike Rockwell, Vice President of Apple’s Vision Products Group
Rockwell: OpenUSD will help accelerate the next generation of AR experiences, from artistic creation to content distribution, and create even more diverse spatial computing applications. Apple is an active contributor to the development of USD, an integral technology for the groundbreaking visionOS platform and the new development tool Reality Composer Pro. We expect USD to grow into a widely adopted standard.
Guy Martin, Director of Open Source and Standards at NVIDIA
Martin: OpenUSD provides 3D developers, artists, and designers with a complete foundation to tackle large-scale industrial, digital content creation, and simulation workloads, with broad multi-application interoperability. . This initiative is an opportunity to accelerate OpenUSD collaboration globally by building new standards across industries and initiatives to enable the digitization of the 3D world and industries.
